Somalia

Trusteeship and Protectorate: The Road to Independence

The conditional return of Italian administration to southern
Somalia gave the new trust territory several unique advantages
compared with other African colonies. To the extent that Italy
held the territory by UN mandate, the trusteeship provisions gave
the Somalis the opportunity to gain experience in political
education and self-government. These were advantages that British
Somaliland, which was to be incorporated into the new Somali
state, did not have. Although in the 1950s British colonial
officials attempted, through various development efforts, to make
up for past neglect, the protectorate stagnated. The disparity
between the two territories in economic development and political
experience would cause serious difficulties when it came time to
integrate the two parts.

The UN agreement established the Italian Trusteeship
Administration (Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della
Somalia--AFIS) to prepare southern Somalia for independence over
a ten-year period. Under the agreement, a UN Advisory Council
based in Mogadishu observed the AFIS and reported its progress to
the UN Trusteeship Council. The agreement required the new
administration to develop the colony's political institutions, to
expand the educational system, to improve the economic
infrastructure, and to give the indigenous people freedom of the
press and the right to dissent. These political and civil
guarantees did not make for smooth Italo-Somali relations. Seen
by the Italians as the source of nationalist sentiment and
activity, the SYL distrusted the new administration, suspecting
it of having a hidden colonial agenda. SYL fears were exacerbated
when the AFIS, soon after taking control, proceeded to jail some
SYL members and to fire others from their civil service posts.
The SYL responded with protests, civil disobedience, and
representations to the UN Advisory Council. The council
intervened to arbitrate the disputes and to encourage the two
sides to collaborate. The conflict simmered for three years
(1950-53) until new economic and political initiatives provided a
channel for the energies of Somali nationalists.

The centerpiece of the initiatives was a series of seven-year
development programs introduced in 1954. Drawing on development
blueprints provided by the United States Agency for International
Cooperation (AIC; later the United States Agency for
International Development--AID) and the UN Development Programme,
the Italian administration initiated plans to stimulate local
agriculture, to improve the infrastructure, and to expand
educational facilities. Exports, responding to these stimuli,
trebled from 1954 to 1960. Despite these improvements, an acute
balance of payments deficit persisted, and the administration had
to rely on foreign grants and Italian subsidies to balance the
budget.

Development efforts in education were more successful.
Between 1952 and 1957, student enrollment at the elementary and
secondary levels doubled. In 1957 there were 2,000 students
receiving secondary, technical, and university education in
Italian Somaliland and through scholarship programs in China,
Egypt, and Italy. Another program offered night-school adult
literacy instruction and provided further training to civil
servants. However, these programs were severely handicapped by
the absence of a standard script and a written national language.
Arabic, Italian, and English served as media of instruction in
the various schools; this linguistic plurality created a Tower of
Babel.

Progress was made throughout the 1950s in fostering political
institutions. In accordance with a UN resolution, in 1950 the
Italians had established in Italian Somaliland an advisory body
known as the Territorial Council, which took an active part in
discussions of proposed AFIS legislation. Composed of thirty-five
members, the council came to be dominated by representatives of
political parties such as the SYL and HDM. Acting as a nascent
parliament, the Territorial Council gained experience not only in
procedural matters but also in legislative debates on the
political, economic, and social problems that would face future
Somali governments. For its part the AFIS, by working closely
with the council, won legitimacy in Somali eyes.

There were other forums, besides the Territorial Council, in
which Somalis gained executive and legislative experience. These
included the forty-eight-member Municipal Council introduced in
1950, whose members dealt with urban planning, public services,
and, after 1956, fiscal and budgetary matters. Rural councils
handled tribal and local problems such as conflicts over grazing
grounds and access to water and pasturelands. However, the
effectiveness of the rural councils was undermined by the
wanderings of the nomads as they searched for water wells and
pastures, a circumstance that made stable political organizations
difficult to sustain. Thus, the UN Advisory Council's plans to
use the rural councils as bridges to development turned out to be
untenable, a situation that enabled AFIS-appointed district
commissioners to become the focus of power and political action.

Territory-wide elections were first held in southern Somalia
in 1956. Although ten parties fielded candidates to select
representatives to a new seventy-seat Legislative Assembly that
replaced the Territorial Council, only the SYL (which won forty-
three seats) and HDM (which won thirteen seats) gained
significant percentages of the sixty seats that the Somalis
contested. The remaining ten seats were reserved for Indians,
Arabs, and other non-Somalia. Abdullaahi Iise, leader of the SYL
in the assembly, became the first prime minister of a government
composed of five ministerial posts, all held by Somalis. The new
assembly assumed responsibility for domestic affairs, although
the governor as representative of the Italian government and as
the most senior official of the AFIS retained the "power of
absolute veto" as well as the authority to rule by emergency
decree should the need arise. Moreover, until 1958 the AFIS
continued to control important areas such as foreign relations,
external finance, defense, and public order.

The term of office of the Iise government was four years
(1956-60)--a trial period that enabled the nascent southern
Somali administration to shape the terms under which it was to
gain its independence. This period was the most stable in modern
Somali politics. The government's outlook was modernist and, once
the Somalis become convinced that Italy would not attempt to
postpone independence, pro-Italian. The franchise was extended to
women in 1958, and nationalization at all levels of
administration from district commissioner to provincial governor
proceeded apace. Attempts were made to suppress clannishness and
to raise the status of women and of groups holding lowly
occupations. The future promised hope: the moral support of
global anticolonial forces, the active backing of the UN, and the
goodwill of the Western powers, including Italy.

The southern Somali government's principal tasks were to
increase economic self-sufficiency and to find external sources
of financial assistance that would replace the support Italy
would withdraw after independence. Another major concern was to
frame the constitution that would take effect once Somalia became
independent. The writers of this document faced two sensitive
issues: the form of government--federalist or unitary--the new
nation would adopt, and nationalist aspirations concerning
Greater Somalia. The first issue was of great interest to the
HDM, whose supporters mainly were cultivators from the well-
watered region between the Shabeelle and Jubba rivers and who
represented about 30 percent of the population. The HDM wanted a
federal form of government. This preference derived from concerns
about dominance by the SYL, which was supported by pastoral clans
that accounted for 60 percent of the population (Daarood and
Hawiye; see
Samaal
, ch. 2). Not surprisingly, the SYL advocated a
unitary form of government, arguing that federalism would
encourage clannishness and social strife. In the end, political
and numerical strength enabled the SYL to prevail.

The delicate issue of Greater Somalia, whose recreation would
entail the detachment from Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya of
Somali-inhabited areas, presented Somali leaders with a dilemma:
they wanted peace with their neighbors, but making claims on
their territory was certain to provoke hostility. Led by Haaji
Mahammad Husseen, the SYL radical wing wanted to include in the
constitution an article calling for the unification of the Somali
nation "by all means necessary." In the end, the moderate
majority prevailed in modifying the wording to demand
"reunification of the dismembered nation by peaceful means."

During the four-year transition to independence, conflicts
over unresolved economic and political issues took the form of
intraparty squabbling within the dominant SYL rather than
interparty competition, as Daarood and Hawiye party stalwarts
banded into factions. The Daarood accused Iise's government of
being under Italian influence and the Hawiye countered with a
charge of clannishness in the Daarood ranks. Husseen's radical
faction continued to charge Iise's government with being too
close to the West, and to Italy in particular, and of doing
little to realize the national goal of reconstituting Greater
Somalia. Despite his rift with prime minister Iise, Husseen, who
had headed the party in the early years, was again elected SYL
president in July 1957. But his agenda of looser ties with the
West and closer relations with the Arab world clashed with the
policies of Iise and of Aadan Abdullah Usmaan, the parliamentary
leader who would become the first president of independent
Somalia. Husseen inveighed against "reactionaries in government,"
a thinly veiled reference to Iise and Usmaan. The latter two
responded by expelling Husseen and his supporters from the SYL.
Having lost the power struggle, Husseen created a militant new
party, the Greater Somali League (GSL). Although Husseen's
firebrand politics continued to worry the SYL leadership, he
never managed to cut deeply into the party's constituency.

The SYL won the 1958 municipal elections in the Italian trust
territory, in part because it had begun to succeed in attracting
important Rahanwayn clan elements like Abdulqaadir Soppe, who
formerly had supported the HDM. Its growing appeal put the SYL in
a commanding position going into the pre-independence election
campaigns for the National Assembly of the Republic, a new body
that replaced the two legislative assemblies of British and
Italian Somaliland. The National Assembly had been enlarged to
contain ninety seats for southern representatives and thirty-
three for northern representatives. The HDM and the GSL accused
the SYL of tampering with the election process and decided to
boycott the elections. Consequently, the SYL garnered sixty-one
uncontested seats by default, in addition to the twenty seats
contested and won by the party. The new government formed in 1959
was headed by incumbent prime minister Iise. The expanded SYL
gave representation to virtually all the major clans in the
south. Although efforts were made to distribute the fifteen
cabinet posts among the contending clan-families, a political
tug-of-war within the party continued between conservatives from
the religious communities and modernists such as Abdirashiid Ali
Shermaarke.

Meanwhile, in British Somaliland the civilian colonial
administration attempted to expand educational opportunities in
the protectorate. The number of Somalis qualifying for
administrative posts remained negligible, however. The
protectorate had experienced little economic or infrastructural
development apart from the digging of more bore wells and the
establishment of agricultural and veterinary services to benefit
animal and plant husbandry. Comprehensive geological surveys
failed to uncover exploitable mineral resources.

Politically, although the SYL opened branches in the north
and the SNL continued to expand its membership, neither party
could mobilize grass-roots support. This changed in 1954, when
the last British liaison officers withdrew from the Reserved
Areas--parts of the Ogaden and the Haud in which the British were
given temporary administrative rights, in accordance with a 1942
military convention between Britain and Ethiopian emperor in
exile Haile Selassie. This move conformed with Britain's
agreement with Ethiopia confirming the latter's title deeds to
the Haud under the 1897 treaty that granted Ethiopia full
jurisdiction over the region. The British colonial administrators
of the area were, however, embarrassed by what they saw as
Britain's betrayal of the trust put in it by Somali clans who
were to be protected against Ethiopian raids.

The Somalis responded with dismay to the ceding of the Haud
to Ethiopia. A new party named the National United Front (NUF),
supported by the SNL and the SYL, arose under the leadership of a
Somali civil servant, Michael Mariano, a prominent veteran of the
SYL's formative years. Remarkably, for the militantly Muslim
country, the man selected to lead the nationalist struggle for
the return of the Haud, was a Christian. NUF representatives
visited London and the UN seeking to have the Haud issue brought
before the world community, in particular the International Court
of Justice. Britain attempted unsuccessfully to purchase the Haud
from Ethiopia. Ethiopia responded with a counterprotest laying
claim to all Somali territories, including the British and
Italian Somalilands, as part of historical Ethiopia--territories,
Haile Selassie claimed, seized by the European powers during a
period of Ethiopian weakness. The Europeans were reluctant to
press new territorial demands on Haile Selassie and did little to
help the Somalis recover the Haud.

Political protests forced Britain in 1956 to introduce
representative government in its protectorate and to accept the
eventual unification of British Somaliland with southern Somalia.
Accordingly, in 1957 a Legislative Council was established,
composed of six members appointed by the governor to represent
the principal clan-families. The council was expanded the
following year to consist of twelve elected members, two
appointees, and fifteen senior elders and notables chosen as ex
officio members. The electoral procedure in the north followed
that in the south, with elections in urban areas conducted by
secret ballot and in the countryside by acclamation in clan
assemblies. In 1960 the first elections contested along party
lines resulted in a victory for the SNL and its affiliate the
USP, the two winning between them all but one of the thirty-three
seats in the new Legislative Assembly. The remaining seat was won
by Mariano, the NUF's defeat clearly attributable to his
Christian affiliation, which his political opponents had made a
prominent campaign issue. Following the election, Mahammad
Ibrahim Igaal was chosen as prime minister to lead a four-man
government.

Popular demand compelled the leaders of the two territories
to proceed with plans for immediate unification. The British
government acquiesced to the force of Somali nationalist public
opinion and agreed to terminate its rule of Somaliland in 1960 in
time for the protectorate to merge with the trust territory on
the independence date already fixed by the UN commission. In
April 1960, leaders of the two territories met in Mogadishu and
agreed to form a unitary state. An elected president was to be
head of state. Full executive powers would be held by a prime
minister answerable to an elected National Assembly of 123
members representing the two territories. Accordingly, British
Somaliland received its independence on June 26, 1960, and united
with the trust territory to establish the Somali Republic on July
1, 1960. The legislature appointed Usmaan president; he in turn
appointed Shermaarke the first prime minister. Shermaarke formed
a coalition government dominated by the SYL but supported by the
two clan-based northern parties, the SNL and the USC. Usmaan's
appointment as president was ratified a year later in a national
referendum.